The readings let us travel back thousands of years,

Sunday, 2/21/16

A great thing about
today’s readings is the way they have our imagination travelling back to life
as it was more than two and three thousand years ago.

In the first reading, God made himself known to a sheep herder named Abram. God said that they should bind
themselves together in a covenant. Now, neither Abram, nor anyone he knew,
could read or write to draw up a covenant. However, Abram had taken part in covenant ceremonies between rival
clans who were disputing over rights to grasslands and wates. So, in obedience to
God’s demand for a covenant, Abram set up for the ceremony the way
clan chiefs did.

Each chief would have
his clan camp in the woods at one side of an open field. He would then
have his men dig a four-foot-deep trench across the opening to where it would connect
with a similar trench coming from the other side. Then, he had his men would cut in
half a heifer, a goat and a ram, placing the halves opposite each other on the
ground on the sides of the trench. Then, each clan chief would jump into the trench
from his side, and he would walk towards the other, saying, “If my clan is
untrue to our pact, let me be cut in two as these beasts are.”

Abram, having placed
the animal halves on opposite sides of the ditch, waited, and waited. Then, after dark, the
Lord’s torch came at him through the ditch, touching the animal haves.

Next, we turn to the
Gospel story of the Transfiguration. It came just a week after Jesus had sorrowfully
announced he was on his way to Jerusalem to suffer greatly and to be crucified.
Needing comfort, Jesus climbed to a mountaintop where he could be alone with
his Father. Peter, John, and James, having climbed up there with Jesus,fell into a deep sleep.

The three awoke to a
vision that was tailored by their understanding of heavenly things. They seemed to see the floor of heaven stretch down. It was like the rubberized canvas of a trampoline, and it scooped Jesus up into that lowered reach of heaven, and it suffused Jesus with heavenly glory. Moses and Elijah came to converse with Jesus. (That was in accord with the Jewish tradition that saw the only two mortals already in
heaven to be Moses and Ezekiel.) Luke tells us that they conversed about his coming to the end of his Exodus in Jerusalem.

While the Transfiguration was preparing Jesus for
the trials to come, this story with its promise of heaven is meant to
strengthen us for what is to come.